For this her choicest secret, timely given, And sweet Experience proves as years increase, ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT. With what unknown delight the mother smiled Now in her Father's house she finds a place; 'Tis to fulfil the purpose of His grace, To guide thy footsteps to the world of light;- That where she is, there thou mayst also be. THE PRESENT MOMENT ONLY OURS. It is said by a celebrated modern writer, "Take care of the minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves." This is an admirable hint; and might be very seasonably recollected when we begin to be "weary in well-doing," from the thought of having a great deal to do. The present is all we have to manage: the past is irrecoverable; the future is uncertain; nor is it fair to burden one moment with the weight of the next. Sufficient unto the moment is the trouble thereof. If we had to walk a hundred miles, we still need set but one step at a time, and this process continued would infallibly bring us to our journey's end. Fatigue generally begins, and is always increased by calculating in a minute the exertion of hours. Thus, in looking forward to future life, let us recollect that we have not to sustain all its toil, to endure all its sufferings, or to encounter all its crosses at once. One moment comes laden with its own little burden, then flies, and is succeeded by another no heavier than the last; if one could be sustained, so can another, and another. Even in looking forward to a single day, the spirit may sometimes faint from an anticipation of the duties, the labors, the trials to temper and patience that may be expected. Now this is unjustly laying the burden of many thousand moments upon one. Let any one resolve to do right now, leaving then to do as it can; and if he were to live to the age of Methuselah, he would never err. But the common error is to resolve to act right to-morrow, or next time, but now, just this once, we must go on the same as ever. Thus life It seems easier to do right to-morrow than to-day, merely because we forget that when to-morrow comes, then will be now. passes, with many, in resolutions for the future which the present never fulfils. It is not thus with those who, "by patient continuance in welldoing, seek for glory, honor, and immortality :"-day by day, minute by minute, they execute the appointed task to which the requisite measure of time and strength is proportioned; and thus, having worked while it was called day, they at length rest from their labors, and their "works follow them." Let us then, “whatever our hands find to do, do it with all our might, recollecting, that now is the proper and the accepted time." GEORGE GORDON BYRON, 1788-1824. THERE are certain names in literary history that we would gladly pass over in silence, were it not that their talents and genius demand some notice from the chronicler of letters. This is the case with Lord Byron. Such was his waywardness of character, such his vicious propensities and licentiousness, and such his skepticism, that we would gladly do our part that his name should be forgotten, were it not that, in consequence of his brilliant genius and his uncommon mental endowments, the interest of the public mind was so generally, and for so long a time, concentrated upon him. His name and his poems will always, indeed, be a subject of conversation and criticism in the literary world; and if some appreciation of his power as a poet cannot be obtained from extracts, recourse will be had to his entire works. We therefore give him a place in our collection of the authors of the nineteenth century. George Gordon Byron, the only son of Captain Byron and Catharine, sole child and heiress of George Gordon, Esq., of Gight, in Scotland, was born in London on the 22d of January, 1788. After preparing for the university at Harrow School, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, 1805, with a reputation for general information very rare in one of his age. Indeed, we have his own record of an almost incredible list of works, in many departments of literature, which he had read before the age of fifteen. At the university, he neglected the prescribed course of study, but was by no means idle. In 1807 appeared his first published work, "The Hours of Idleness," a collection of poems in no way remarkable, and now chiefly remembered through the castigation which it received from the "Edinburgh Review." To this critique, which galled, but did not depress him, we owe the first spirited outbreak of his talents, in the satire entitled "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," which was published in 1809. Able and vigorous as this was, and creditable to his talents, it contained so many harsh and capricious judgments, that he was afterward anxious to suppress it. A few days before the publication of this satire, he took his seat in the House of Lords; but he was ill qualified to shine in politics; and seeing that he made no impression there, he soon left England for the continent. In 1811, having lost his mother, he returned home, his private affairs being very much embarrassed. He brought with him the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," which he had written abroad. They were published in March, 1812, and were received by the public with the most unbounded admiration; so that Byron emerged at once from a state of loneliness and neglect, unusual for one in his sphere of life, to be the magnet and idol of society. As he tersely says in his memoranda, "I awoke one morning, and found myself famous." In May of the next year appeared his "Giaour;" and in November, the "Bride of Abydos," (written in a week ;) and, about three months afterward, the "Corsair," written in the astonishingly short space of ten days. On the 2d of January, 1815, he was married to Miss Milbanke, the only daughter and heiress of Sir Ralph Milbanke, the only issue of which marriage was Augusta Ada, born on the 10th of December of that year. On the 15th of January of the next year, the husband and wife separated for ever. The cause of this was, and still is, a mystery. But most of those who composed the circles in which Lord Byron moved declared against him, and society withdrew its countenance. Deeply stung by the verdict, he resolved to leave his country, and on the 25th of April, 1816, he quitted England for the last time. His course was through Flanders, and along the Rhine to Switzerland, where he resided until the close of the year, and where he composed some of his most powerful works-the third canto of "Childe Harold," the "Prisoner of Chillon," 'Darkness," "The Dream," part of "Manfred," and a few minor poems. The next year he went to Italy, where, for a course of years, he gave himself up to the grossest species of libertinism; and where, as might be expected, he wrote his most licentious and blasphemous works. 66 In 1823, he interested himself warmly in the cause of the Greeks, then struggling to throw off the Turkish yoke; and in December of that year sailed for Greece, with all the funds he could command, to aid the oppressed in their efforts for freedom. This was, certainly, a redeeming trait in his character, and we are glad to record it. On the 5th of January, 1824, he arrived at Missolonghi, where his reception was enthusiastic, the whole population coming out to meet him. But he had scarcely arranged his plans to aid the nation he had so befriended, when he was seized with a fever, and expired on the 19th of April, 1824.1 Of the character of Lord Byron's poetry, there can be but one opinion in "We are to remember that the period of our lives is not so peremptorily determined by God, but that we may lengthen or shorten them. live longer or die sooner, according as we behave ourselves in this world. Thus, some men destroy a healthful and vigorous constitution of body by intemperance and lust, and do as manifestly kill themselves as those who hang, or poison, or drown themselves."-SHERLOCK. every honest and pure mind-that, while it exhibits powers of description unusually great, and is full of passages of exquisite beauty, it cannot, as a whole, be read without the most injurious influence upon the moral sensibilities. The tendency of it is to shake our confidence in virtue, and to diminish our abhorrence of vice; to palliate crime, and to unsettle our notions of right and wrong. "Humiliating was the waste and degradation of his genius, and melancholy is the power which his poetry has exerted upon multitudes of minds. The moral tendency of some of his poems is exceedingly pernicious: his complete works ought never to be purchased, and we may feel proud not to be acquainted with them, except by extracts and beauties." Indeed, if any one should possess the fiendish desire to break down the principles of virtue in any young man or young woman, the best way to begin would be to put a copy of Byron's works into the hands of the destined victim. "Fore-warned-fore-armed."1 THE DYING GLADIATOR.2 The seal is set.-Now welcome, thou dread power! Of worms-on battle-plains or listed spot? Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot. 1 I admire the sublimity of his genius. But I have feared, and do still fear, the conse quences the inevitable consequences of his writings. I fear, that in our enthusiastic admiration of genius, our idolatry of poetry, the awful impiety and the staggering unbelief contained in those writings are lightly passed over, and acquiesced in, as the allowable aberrations of a master intellect, which had lifted itself above the ordinary world, which had broken down the barriers of ordinary mind, and which revelled in a creation of its own: a world, over which the sunshine of imagination lightened at times with an almost ineffable glory, to be succeeded by the thick blackness of doubt, and terror, and misanthropy, relieved only by the lightning flashes of terrible and unholy passion."-J. G. WHITTIER. We read with horror the accounts of the barbarous and brutal gladiatorial exhibitions among the Romans; and were not the historical evidence irrefutable, we could hardly believe that in one city alone (Capua) forty thousand were kept, and fed, and trained to butcher each other for the gratification of the Roman people. But let us be honest, and not have too much self-complacency. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull the mote out of thy brother's eye." How do modern military schools”—(our ludi gladiatorii)-among so-called Christian nations, differ in principle from the ancient? Are not young men trained in them, for years, to learn the art of human butchery-to learn how to kill their fellow-men most scientifically? May the day speedily come when our land, by utterly abolishing such establishments, shall set, in this respect, a Christian example to all the nations of the earth! 158 BYRON. I see before me the gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand; his manly brow And his droop'd head sinks gradually low; Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won. He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes All this rush'd with his blood. Shall he expire, APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, I love not man the less, but nature more, What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray, And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls |